Looking Back

We sometimes seem to spend a great of time looking backward. By that I mean at things we’ve done, or neglected to do, and what any of it really means.

Many of us, myself included, sometimes tend to judge ourselves by those things we worked at for years, as if our workplace efforts were the things that defined us.

It’s been more than two years since I decided to hang up the nine-to-five routine, and it sometimes seems as if those thirty-eight years were the sum total of me, at least by the way I talk about them.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Like so many before me, I used my talents to perform the tasks required of me. While doing that, I often reflected on a quote I remembered from Henry Ford who said, “Whether you think you can or think you can’t … you are right.”

I always chose to believe I could.

But that still doesn’t mean my old work history defines me. There are things I still want to learn, things I still want to do, things I know I can do. Things I dream.

And with my lovely bride beside me, as she has been all this time, I know that all of them are possible. My mirrors won’t define me. They just show how far I’ve come.

I tend to look back at things I should have done and feel sometimes that I have wasted my life but that quote from Henry Ford made me think. I am going to use that as a mantra and change my thought pattern.